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Foreign Affairs Plus: The Rich and the Rest

This Foreign Affairs Plus collection includes an essay from the Nov/Dec issue by New Yorker staff writer George Packer entitled "The Broken Contract." It also offers the first chapter of the best-selling book Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class as well as four Foreign Affairs articles on economics, globalization, and inequality.

Like an odorless gas, economic inequality pervades every corner of the United States and saps the strength of its democracy. Over the past three decades, Washington has consistently favored the rich -- and the more wealth accumulates in a few hands at the top, the more influence and favor the rich acquire, making it easier for them and their political allies to cast off restraint without paying a social price.

This book starts with a mystery every bit as puzzling as that of the typical crime drama, and far more important for the lives of Americans: Why, after a generation following World War II in which prosperity was broadly distributed up and down the income ladder, did the gains of economic growth start going mostly to the top...

The U.S. economy appears to be coming apart at the seams. Unemployment remains at nearly ten percent, the highest level in almost 30 years; foreclosures have forced millions of Americans out of their homes; and real incomes have fallen faster and further than at any time since the Great Depression...

Globalization makes the world richer -- but not all people do well by it, writes a Nobel Prize-winning economist. As developing countries prosper and become more competitive, growth and unemployment in the Unites States are starting to diverge, increasing income inequality and reducing jobs for less-educated workers.

Over the last several years, a striking new feature of the U.S. economy has emerged: real income growth has been extremely skewed, with relatively few high earners doing well while incomes for most workers have stagnated or, in many cases, fallen...

The polarized debate over the effects of free trade and international capital flows has become a fixture of world politics. Boosters of globalization assert that it is a win-win proposition for the rich and the poor, developed and developing countries alike...